Tag Archive for: house

House lawmakers seek explanation from FBI’s Wray over ransomware response

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By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

(CNN) — Leaders of the House Oversight and Reform Committee are questioning the FBI’s handling of a July ransomware attack on a Florida-based IT firm that compromised up to 1,500 businesses.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, and James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, have requested a briefing from FBI Director Christopher Wray after the bureau reportedly withheld a key to decrypt the ransomware for nearly three weeks, potentially costing victims millions of dollars in recovery costs.

“Congress must be fully informed whether the FBI’s strategy and actions are adequately and appropriately addressing” the threat of ransomware to the US economy, Maloney and Comer wrote Wednesday in a letter to Wray that was shared with CNN. The lawmakers said they want to “understand the rationale behind the FBI’s decision to withhold” the key to unlock computers infected by the ransomware.

The FBI has in recent years ramped up resources to address ransomware, with FBI field offices across the country communicating with victim US companies. But a growing chorus of lawmakers wants to know if the bureau is balancing the need to protect victims with the need to disrupt criminal groups based in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Disrupting the hackers

The Washington Post reported last week that the FBI withheld the decryption key as the bureau planned an operation to disrupt the hackers, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate known as REvil. That operation never materialized as REvil mysteriously went offline in mid-July, only to reemerge in September.

The Washington Post was first to report on the letter to the FBI.

The July ransomware incident at the IT firm, Kaseya, rippled across the firm’s customer base of small and medium sized businesses as the hackers were able to breach about 50 of Kaseya’s clients and some 800 to 1,5000 customers of those clients.

An FBI spokesperson said the bureau received the letter and referred CNN to Wray’s recent congressional testimony.

In testimony last week in the Senate, Wray…

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Ransomware strike targets US agriculture industry, White House quietly hits back

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The White House meets with Big Tech companies amid cyberattacks on U.S. companies. FOX Business’ Ed Lawrence with more.

An industry marked as “off limits” to Russian hackers by President Biden was hit in a ransomware attack earlier this week when the operations of two farming co-ops in Iowa and Minnesota were disrupted.

In a June meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden warned the Kremlin that cyberattacks against 16 U.S. industries – including agriculture – would not be tolerated.

The president said it was an effort to establish a “cybersecurity arrangement” and restore “order” after the largest U.S. fuel pipeline and a major meatpacking company were shut down by ransomware schemes.

$5.9M RANSOMWARE ATTACK ON MAJOR AGRICULTURE GROUP POSES RISK TO US GRAIN, PORK, CHICKEN SUPPLY

On Sunday, Minnesota-based farm supply and grain marketing cooperative Crystal Valley was hit by a ransomware attack that “infected the computer system” and “severely interrupted the daily operations of the company,” the group said in a statement.

The co-op did not answer Fox News questions about the ransom amount or who is suspected behind the latest attack.

But the following day reports surfaced showing another attack was levied at Iowa-based farming co-op, NEW Cooperative, by hackers demanding a $5.9 million cryptocurrency payout in exchange for renewed access to its food supply chains.

NEW Cooperative did not respond to a Fox News request for an interview. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Russian cybercrime group BlackMatter is believed to be behind the attack.

In a screen shot by Dark Feed, the group appeared to mock NEW Cooperative by suggesting they did not fall under “critical” infrastructure outlined by Biden.

The farming group warned the cybercrime group in an online chat that they attacked the agricultural industry and could face severe consequences from the U.S. government, Recorded Future shared in a tweet.

Despite reports that BlackMatter was negotiating with the Iowa co-op, a National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson told Fox News that the U.S. government has not formally attributed the attacks to a specific group.

“That being said, we are bringing the full weight…

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Have you tried… hacking under house arrest in cyberpunk mystery Song of Farca?

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In Song of Farca, you have to experience everything through a computer screen, which is something that feels very familiar in the age of working from home and endless Zoom calls. Sadly, unlike hero Isabella Song, my days involved more spreadsheets, less catching serial killers and spying on goat-obsessed heiresses. She’s a hacker under house arrest, called on by various people to help investigate their gruesome and ghastly cases. 

Straight away the UI of the game will catch your eye. It splits the screen in two, with Izzy and her dog Scooter pottering around her apartment in the top half, and Izzy’s computer on the bottom. You can only control what happens through her computer, but there’s just something humanizing about seeing her grab a snack or looking out of her window before she wanders over to her desk. It helps to see her that way too, because you’re going to be doing a lot of shady stuff while you’re investigating. Invading people’s privacy by hacking security cameras, stalking their online presence, and operating in the greyest of moral areas. 

Digital detective

But then the people she’s investigating aren’t exactly angels. There are the people stealing robots for eTerrier dogfights, blackmailers using someone’s previous sex work as collateral, cybernetically enhanced killers, and a family that makes Succession’s Roys look like the Brady Bunch. It’s these stories that make the game absolutely addictive, even when you’re hacking what feels like your sixteenth security camera or struggling to present the right evidence to someone in one of the game’s many video calls with persons of interest. The whole thing plays out against a backdrop of a near-future where technology companies, and those that know how to take advantage of their wares, wield all the power. 

Song of Farca

(Image credit: Wooden Monkeys)

Izzy knows how to make the most of the loopholes that this world presents, and as well as using security cameras to give her access to people’s private spaces – each one a little logic puzzle where people might need to be distracted by a malfunctioning coffee machine or robot vacuum – to hack their laptops and phones, she can use her AI, Maurice, to analyze the evidence she finds. Photos…

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Is White House Crackdown on Ransomware Having Any Effect?

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The latest edition of the ISMG Security Report features an analysis of the state of the Biden administration’s efforts to disrupt ransomware attackers.

In this report, you’ll hear (click on player beneath image to listen):

  • ISMG’s Scott Ferguson detail White House efforts to combat ransomware via geopolitical and law enforcement means, as well as by boosting the cyber resiliency of the U.S. private sector and government agencies;


  • ISMG’s Jeremy Kirk cover/detail/analyze an emergency patch from Apple, which fixes a zero-click integer overflow vulnerability in iMessage that was being exploited by Pegasus spyware;


  • Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Gould, who heads Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council’s cybercrime program, detail essentials for planning and executing a cybersecurity incident response plan.


The ISMG Security Report appears on this and other ISMG websites on Fridays. Don’t miss the Sept. 3 and Sept. 10 editions, which respectively discuss the latest data breach trends and ransomware attackers’ ideal targets.

Theme music for the ISMG Security Report is by Ithaca Audio under a Creative Commons license.

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